A data center is made up of a plurality of computer server devices of different types and operating systems. Servers may be used for a variety of purposes, or simply to backup or mirror one another (load balancing, backup, etc.). Servers enclosed in one data center may be under the management of different independent groups, and are isolated by responsibility boundaries. The independent groups might be IT management teams of different tenants of the data center, each management team responsible for IT management beyond that which is provided by the common team representing the data center provider. Similarly, within an enterprise that maintains common base technology and standards, there are often various disparate groups that have management responsibilities for islands of the overall enterprise IT environment. Within this environment, if two servers are experiencing the same problem, there will be many cases where different organizations are responsible for the investigation and resolution. In most cases, these organizations are not in communication or cooperation with each other because they are each responsible for different subsets of resources residing in the same data center (or corporate standard) environment, but could greatly benefit from the results obtained in resolving the same issue by another organization.
There are a number of current solutions that perform patch management. However, these solutions fail to selectively disseminate patch solutions to other servers that are in some way linked together (e.g., by business relationship, or by being in the same data center). Accordingly, what is needed is a solution that solves at least one of the above-identified deficiencies.